


Listen

by Prawnperson



Category: Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012), The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
Genre: Black Bellamy is mentioned, Conversations, M/M, Minor Angst, Other crew members are mentioned - Freeform, Pre Relationship, Yelling, albino is a good little sprog, scarf is sick of the captain’s shit, slight shipping mentions, the crew being stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prawnperson/pseuds/Prawnperson
Summary: The pirate with a scarf has seemingly endless patience in the books, and as much as I admire that, I can’t help but think that even he must have a breaking point.
Relationships: Pirate Captain/Pirate with a Scarf
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	Listen

**Author's Note:**

> We all joke about scarf being 100% done with the Captain a lot of the time, but in truth, that probably leads to something less than pleasant.

They’re at the fair, and the Pirate Captain has been looking for a fight. 

There isn’t a reason, he says, he just fancies a fight. A good scrap. It will be fun, won’t it? Don’t look so worried, he says. 

For the entire day, the pirate with a scarf has been gently trying to sway the Captain away from fighting. It’s the type of gentle chiding and coaxing that the whole crew has now gotten used to and learned to ignore, save for the albino pirate. He follows the pirate with a scarf like a duckling and pull faces at every new sly remark the Captain makes.

They’re at a coconut shy whenever the Captain spots someone. It might be Bellamy, but his general pre-fight rambling gets lost to the noise of the fair, and all everyone hears is that the Captain wants to go after someone, and of course, with the crew being the crew, they immediately go for their cutlasses and pistols. 

“I’m going to tear him to shreds.”

“You jolly well are not!”

Everyone is surprised by the pirate with a scarf’s sudden outburst. Even the people at the fair who have only know him for the duration of the queue at the coconut shy are surprised. The most surprised of all, perhaps, is the Pirate Captain.

“I’m sorry, number two?”

“You’re not fighting anyone! I’ve been telling you all bloody day, and you’ve heard, I know you have!”

The only time the crew has ever seen the pirate with a scarf remotely like this is the time a few years ago the Captain had asked him to slap some sense into him, and he had taken the request a bit too literally. Since then, it has become routine for the Captain to say something, the pirate with a scarf to eloquently present his points as to why it’s a very bad idea with an endless patience, and for the Captain to ignore him.

It seems that, today, his patience has been stretched too thin.

“You can’t speak to me like that! I’m your captain!”

“And a much better one you’d be, too, if you’d listened to one piece of good advice I’ve been giving you the whole time! We’re going back to the boat right now before you make an absolute spectacle of yourself.”

The crew look back and forth between the two men like they’re a particularly good tennis match. The Captain’s mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water, clearly lost for what to say, how to come up with a retort to something like that from his first mate, who is skinny as a rake and a good deal shorter than him and should absolutely not be making him feel so ashamed of his actions. He’s a pirate captain, for goodness sakes! He takes orders from no one.

And yet, he still ducks his head to look at his boots. He can’t help feeling as though he’s done something very bad.

“Alright.”

“Yes, well...good. Go on.”

It’s clear that the high of adrenaline is wearing off, because the pirate with a scarf is shaking a bit, the furious edge to his voice softening. He turns towards the crew.

“Go on, the lot of you.”

So the pirate crew, loyal to a fault to their Captain and their Captain alone, beetle off without so much of a squeak. The pirate with a scarf feels as though he can hardly breathe.

He feels a small hand tug at his sleeve. When he looks down, the albino pirate is gazing up at him with a slightly nervous expression, and suddenly, the pirate with a scarf feels like the worst person in the world.

“Are you cross at us?”

“No, I’m not. I’m sorry, albino, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He finds that, quite irrationally, he’s tempted to pick albino up and comfort him like he’s still a tiny child. Well, he is still a tiny child, but not to that extent.

“Did you mean to upset the Captain?”

“No, I didn’t. I...I was very cross at him, and I wanted to get a rise out of him. I behaved very foolishly.”

“You weren’t really wrong. It’s annoying when people don’t listen.”

The pirate with a scarf suddenly has a thought, a way to make up for spoiling the fairground fun of one of the few pirates who actually take the time to listen to what he’s saying.

“Why don’t we get some ice cream before we go back, ok? Since you were so nice.”

The albino pirate beams.

———

It’s an hour or two later by the time the two of them return to the ship, because the pirate with a scarf, now slightly nervous after letting his frustrations take over—and slightly nervous because it felt both good and bad to do so—had begun waffling on about seagulls. The albino pirate had listened politely while they had their ice cream, had asked appropriately timed questions about wingspan and colouring, until the rides started to close up.

Now, they are back on the boat, which is alarmingly quiet. It’s so quiet that the pirate with a scarf can hear whispers coming from below the deck, which he imagines are about him, because his shoes, according to the surprisingly curvaceous pirate, make a distinct noise whenever he walks. 

“I hope he doesn’t apologise.”

He hears someone say, maybe the pirate in red. It makes his heart clench oddly.

When he knocks on the Captain’s door, it takes a moment for the Captain to allow him in. The pirate with a scarf barely has the courage to enter the office, still a tiny bit angry and incredibly anxious.

It comes as a great surprise that the Captain doesn’t shout at him. It shouldn’t, not really, because the Captain is not a naturally aggressive man, he’s good natured and avoids verbal fights with people he actually likes as much as possible. He isn’t cruel. 

“Where were you?”

“Albino and I stayed at the fair. I had to calm down.”

He isn’t entirely calm. He isn’t very calm at all. He wonders if he’ll ever be calm again.

“I’m not here to apologise, Captain. I feel like I reacted somewhat irrationally, but given the circumstances, I’m afraid to say I don’t feel very guilty at all.”

The words pour out and he’s unable to stop them. The pirate with a scarf wonders if he’s going to get himself fired—out of a canon—or made to walk the plank or be run through for speaking like this. The Captain is still his boss, after all. He just can’t seem to bite his tongue.

“It wasn’t my intention to upset you. I just... I am at the end of my tether with you, Captain. You don’t listen to me, and then I have to clean up the mess almost every time. You have to understand how totally frustrating that is, sir.”

He almost definitely doesn’t. The Captain is so loud and so confident that he’s probably never had to worry about being ignored in his life. The pirate with a scarf, on the other hand, is not naturally shy or timid, but it takes quite a lot to keep pushing ideas forward only to have them shoved back again, or perhaps worse, not heard at all. 

“I just couldn’t keep being ignored, sir. I’m not going to keep taking the responsibility of a first mate without receiving any of the respect that should come with it.”

“You’re quite right.”

What?

“What?”

The Captain rubs the back of his neck, doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I know that I can sometimes...brush off things you say. It’s my biggest weakness, I always feel like I’m right, and I get so caught up in it I forget that you’re always planning things better than I am.”

Which isn’t really true, the pirate with a scarf thinks. He plans carefully and diligently, but if they did what he wanted on every adventure they would hardly be adventures at all.

“I think it annoys me a bit, that you do things better than me. I think it worries me that you might one day get sick of me, even though I hardly go about it the right way trying to make you want to stay. Stubborn streak, I suppose. Maybe a bit of foolishness.”

A lot of foolishness. So much.

“It’s not right, what I did today.”

“It wasn’t wrong, either. You were quite right to tell me off. Maybe not quite like that, but you had obviously been holding that back for a while. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so cross.”

The Captain finally looks up. The pirate with a scarf feels as though he’s staring right down into his heart and trying to figure out everything about him. 

“I don’t want you to change, Captain. I just wish you would at least listen to my ideas.”

“Really?”

“Of course! I wouldn’t have stayed if you weren’t you, sir. I don’t think anything you did could...”

He trails off. To tell the Captain now that he’s grown so intolerably fond of him would be too much, too soon. It would be wrong to say he probably couldn’t even leave if he wanted to. 

“I’m willing to try. It probably won’t be very good, at first, but I won’t have you feeling like that anymore.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There is, of course, a very important thing left if we are to start going about this properly.”

“What’s that, Captain?”

———

The crew are not fighting for once. They’re still too shell shocked from the events of the afternoon. They whip their heads up at the sound and sight of the Captain kicking open the galley door.

“Listen up, you scurvy rogues!”

He cries, and the crew are worried for a moment that they will have to suffer the wrath of one of the Captain’s childish tempers before the pirate with a scarf steps in behind him. He looks pleased. Happy, even. 

“Tell me who this is.”

The pirate with a scarf, they answer, save for one or two who say nothing at all.

“And who is he to you?”

Nobody answers for a moment. Is it a trick question? Is this a quiz? The pirates aren’t very good at quizzes, the only pub quiz they ever one was due in large part to the fact that one of the rounds was on Jane Austen novels.

“He’s your first mate, of course! So it’s time you started treating him as such.”

Everyone mumbles. It seems a tad hypocritical of the Captain to say such things, until—

“I know I’ve set a shocking example, but it’s still about time we all made amends, so you’re going to have a word with yourselves and listen to what he tells you, alright?”

Mumble, mumble. No outright agreements. Perhaps one or two small nods. 

“He’s very smart, you know. It would do us all well to hear what he has to say.”

A few of the more observant pirates notice that the pirate with a scarf is a bit flushed, the tips of his ears a very light shade of red. Not many of the pirates are of the more observant variety, and those who are aren’t quick to tattle. 

“Understood?”

“Yes, Captain.”

———

Leaving the galley, the pirate with a scarf feels as though he’s standing in an oven. He’s flustered, a bit, not entirely used to being appreciated so openly. It feels good. It feels nice. 

He likes it.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He repeats, casting the Captain a quick glance. He doesn’t look upset.

“I know. You did, at first, but...well, it’s alright. Just please, don’t shout at me again. You’re quite a scary little man, number two.”

The pirate with a scarf laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Any thoughts? Opinions? Criticisms? Please let me know! Thank you for reading :)


End file.
